The big news consisted of announcements of the first beta versions of Silverlight 2 and Internet Explorer 8. Downloads of both beta applications were available immediately following the announcements at yesterday’s keynote presentation.

Microsoft has positioned Internet Explorer 8 as a significant step forward in both functionality and support for existing Web standards. Explorer general manager Dean Hachamovitch stated “Browser differences waste too much developer’s time” and expressed Microsoft’s support for CSS 2.1 and parts of HTML 5.

Also announced at MIX08 were the beta of Expression Studio 2 and SQL Server Data Services, a hosted version of Microsoft’s SQL Server.

I’ll post additional thoughts as time permits. In the meantime, you can get a flavor for the keynote presentations through my Flickr photostreams.